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Talk:Henri (In High Places)
Does it seem odd to anyone else that Christians should be persuaded that this man was the equal or better of Jesus Himself when he was not able to duplicate the Resurrection? Turtle Fan 02:22, June 27, 2011 (UTC) :Given the circumstance of the plague finally stopping only after Henri's death, and given the fact that more than one person has claimed to be a either another son of God or Jesus himself, and have found faithful followers in OTL--not that strange. TR 04:32, June 27, 2011 (UTC) ::The former could have been worked by an angel or prophet or some such, and as for the latter, those who make such claims and gain followers (Hong Xiuquan comes to mind, though it's a shame that Western students have a tendency to let his religious dogmas distract them from his far more substantial and significant impacts on the histories of China and of nineteenth-century imperialism) do so by claiming to have a fundamentally different purpose from that Jesus had. They hold Jesus's ministry as simply another step in an evolution of a more godlike humanity, as the Baha'i view it, perhaps resolving one source of theological and spiritual confusion while simultaneously creating a second one. It's one thing to make demagogic appeals to uneducated Christians or non-Christians who don't realize that the relationship of the claims in question to the dogmas of their faith border on the irrelevant; it's quite another to get the institutional churches to turn in a whole new direction, even if the rapid shrinkage of the population of Christendom would significantly loosen the cultural inertia maintaining the Church's status quo. It's the difference between saying "Jesus was cool, but we need to see Him in a context and think of some of the things He missed" and "Jesus was as you believe Him to have been; I'm just like Him, but better." An audience of believers who were knowledgeable about their faith and somewhat intellectually discerning--the very people who would be in a position to make a ruling on Henri's status that carried the weight of Church-sanctioned dogma--could be expected to ask questions like "If you're just like Jesus but better, shouldn't you, too, be able to transcend death?" :::Well, to be clear, HT doesn't have Henri saying "I'm better than Jesus". He only claimed to be a Second Son; his followers decided they liked him better. TR 15:55, June 27, 2011 (UTC) ::::All right, but the above should apply to claims of equality with Jesus as well. Now since we're talking about medieval Europe, they might understand the second son to be an inferior (though then they wouldn't have decided they liked him better; I suppose that could have come later) but we'd still be talking about an incarnation of God Himself. Turtle Fan 16:39, June 27, 2011 (UTC) ::At any rate, this Second Revelation should be as far from OTL Christianity as Christianity is from Judaism, or as far as Islam is from Christianity, or even Baha'i. I haven't read IHP but I'm guessing it's a religion which, when compared to Christianity, shows a greater emphasis on worldly wellbeing (the miracle obtained from Henri's death is not one which foreshadows an improvement in the next life, but in this one) and retributive justice over forgiveness and mercy ("Father, forgive them" is replaced with "Father, avenge me"). Is this prediction accurate? Turtle Fan 05:27, June 27, 2011 (UTC) :::It does tend more towards worldly wellbeing, but it doesn't seem any more or less vengeful. TR 15:55, June 27, 2011 (UTC) ::::I didn't much care for Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, which has a similar POD, only the Black Death kills 99% of Europe instead of 80%, and there aren't enough whiteys left to make up even a backwater nation-state like Versailles. The survivors eventually become slaves of the Muslims who colonize Europe after the plague is gone, plus one reservation in the Orkneys where they follow traditions with imperfect faithfulness for the benefit of tourists. (There is an inversion of the preference for lighter pigmentation that is seen almost universally throughout racial and cultural groups in our world; there is a deep, abiding belief that the darker a human being is, the healthier and stronger and more attractive. This doesn't save subsaharan Africa from the same colonial exploitation which caused it so much suffering in OTL, however.) ::::Anyway, in the first of ten novellettes that makes up the book, before the near-extinction of human life in Europe has been completed, the viewpoint character encounters a Christian who shares the Church's teaching that God has decided to destroy all of humanity and is obliterating Christendom first to spare them the horrors that await as living conditions on Earth get worse and worse. The underlying message of "Our hope is in the next life" is more in keeping with Christian orthodoxy, especially in the 14th century. Turtle Fan 16:39, June 27, 2011 (UTC)